


lay it out on the map

by couldaughter



Series: author's choice [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Injury Recovery, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-10 01:56:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5564569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/couldaughter/pseuds/couldaughter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luke thinks he might be humanising the robot arm a little too intensely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lay it out on the map

Luke is back in the medbay a week after he gets his new-and-supposedly-improved robotic hand.

“It itches,” he says, brow furrowing. “Metal shouldn’t itch, right?”

“No,” says the medtech. “Sometimes amputees experience phantom pains - nerve endings sending signals to nowhere, basically. Not much to do but ignore it, I’m afraid.”

He hadn’t really been thinking of himself as an amputee, until this moment. It is the right word, he supposes, at length. His arm is gone, and now he has something else that’s not quite an arm in its place.

It probably would’ve been easier to deal with if the new thing didn’t have skin.

Sometimes it twitches, or vibrates, or just sits at his side like dead weight until it remembers what nerve impulses feel like.

Luke thinks he might be humanising the robot arm a little too intensely.

\---

One night he wakes up in the dark, gasping for breath, and he can’t get his hand to uncurl from the fist it’s made.

He goes to Leia, because the medtech will ask why he’s awake and expect an answer. It’s nowhere near dawn but he finds her awake, reading in the dim light of her cabin.

“Hello,” he says, quietly. His hand is still curled up tight. If it was real his fingernails would have sliced through skin and muscle, by then. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

“Not at all,” says Leia, as she sets down her datapad. “Hello, Luke.”

He smiles weakly. “I need, uh, a hand with something.” 

Leia glances at his hand and smiles, but not in an amused way. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Luke sits beside her on the bed while she works, his hand in her lap.

The hatch in the forearm is open, so he looks away and studies the bulkhead intently. Seeing the wiring when it was attached had made him feel lightheaded, and it hasn’t got any less nauseating since.

“Nearly done,” says Leia, breaking Luke’s train of thought. “I’ve had to weaken some of the joints - they should tighten back up with time but you might have trouble gripping with it for a while so… be careful.” She put a cautious arm around his shoulders. 

“I’m always careful,” Luke says, sincerely. “I have a 75% record on keeping my limbs attached.”

“How encouraging,” Leia replies, tightening her grip. “Try and keep it that way, alright?”

He nods, his throat suddenly tight. He wants to curl up next to her and sleep for a thousand years. “Thanks,” he says, and leaves.

\---

It really is hard to use that hand for the next few days.

After the fifteenth time he drops a screwdriver while helping Lando with ship repairs, he gives up and resigns himself to left-handedness for the next few days.

“You doing alright there, kid?” Lando raises his eyebrows, mouth slanted down at one side.

Luke shrugs. “Arm hurts.” He neglects to mention it’s the arm that’s currently inside a gas giant, probably disintegrated. That would definitely explain why it hurts so damn much, to be fair.

“We can take a break if you want - it’s not like the toaster oven is vital equipment for running the ship.”

“No,” says Luke. “It’s fine.” He tucks the hand inside his jacket and gets back to passing tools across. He can feel it twitching against his chest.

It occurs to him after a while that he could probably use the Force for this and just give up on limbs altogether, but the brush of Lando’s fingers against his every so often might be the only thing keeping him grounded.

It’s uncomplicated in a way that few things in Luke’s life are, nowadays.

\---

He doesn’t think about Vader often.

He thinks about his father a lot. They’re separate in his head in a way that’s probably not entirely healthy.

\---

Lando gives him a haircut.

“You’re looking scruffy,” he explains. “Gotta look your best for this Jedi Master, right?”

“I don’t know that he’ll notice,” Luke says, smiling. “But it is getting long, so I might as well do it just for me.” 

Lando gets to work.

Luke tried to get it cut by the guy who’s taken on barbering duties for what seems to be the entire rebel alliance, but he found himself flinching every time the scissors got anywhere near him. He’d been very understanding, but Luke still feels a sinking in his stomach at the memory.

He’d resolved to find someone he trusted with his life, literally. Lando had been near the top of the list.

It looks pretty nice, in the end. “Thanks,” he says, hopping down from the stool Lando had dragged into his cabin from god knows where. It was pretty cramped with the two of them in there, but not airless in the way Luke had been finding much of the base.

“I think I did pretty good,” says Lando, not cocky at all. Self-confident is probably the second way Luke would describe Lando, right after ‘really handsome’.

Luke smiles at him. “I think so too.”

\---

Eventually, Lando and Chewie leave to look for Han.

The arm feels a little more like it might be his arm by then. It twitches less often, works a little more smoothly. His missing arm still aches from time to time.

“You know,” says Leia, lunch tray balanced on her knees next to Luke, blaster abandoned halfway through cleaning. “You could have gone with them.”

Luke doesn’t bother pretending not to understand her. “No, I couldn’t,” he says. “I have my own path to take.”

“Very cryptic,” says Leia, dryly. “Fancy telling me what that means?”

“My mastery of the force is still limited,” he replies. “I nearly lost more than a hand fighting Vader. I’m not fast enough yet. Not strong enough.”

“You’re plenty strong,” Leia says. She doesn’t look up from her food.

Luke shrugs. His hand spasms. “That’s nice of you to say.”

“Where do you think you’ll go?” She asks, a while later.

He shrugs again. “Back to Dagobah, maybe. And then somewhere I can forge a new lightsaber. Using my father’s one didn’t work out so well.” Smiling is a struggle but he does it anyway.

“I’ve heard that.” Leia leans into his shoulder. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll be back,” Luke promises, and hopes it’s not an empty one. “I’ll come back, we’ll rescue Han, you two can get married and live happily ever after…”

Leia hits him in the arm. “What, and leave you to fend for yourself?”

“I’d have Artoo.”

“That fills me with confidence.”

“He’s a very good droid!”

“He has no arms.”

“I only have one, really,” says Luke. “And I’m doing alright.”

There’s a pause. Leia sighs. “That’s not what I meant. Sorry.”

“It’s alright.” Luke rests his head on her shoulder. “I’ll miss you too.”

\---

The day before Luke leaves for Dagobah, he goes to the medtech one last time.

“Is it integrating well?”

“Better than I thought it would,” says Luke honestly, looking down at the fingers as they’re pulled and twisted by capable hands. “It feels more like my arm than it did when you first attached it.”

“It’s part of you now,” says the medtech. “Whether it feels like it is a matter of time, really.”

**Author's Note:**

> so... as a 19 year old who literally only just watched return of the jedi and empire strikes back in the last 24 hours, guess who has instantly written self-indulgent fanfic (luke skywalker having a huge crush on lando calrissian 2k15). i realised literally 95% of the way through that i accidentally made the arm a metaphor for luke's acceptance of darth vader being his father... #writing am i right
> 
> hopefully not too ooc, please don't eat me alive star wars fandom :D title is from copenhagen (let me go) by vienna teng
> 
> i'm available elsewhere online on tumblr @folignobobrovsky, which was mostly hockey until about two days ago. star wars ruins lives


End file.
